Money well spent? The city can't tell

Kevin Fagan, Todd Wallack, Chronicle Staff

Published
4:00 am PST, Tuesday, October 31, 2006

unaccountable037.jpg
Despite the claims of thousands of homeless being taken off the streets, they still remain a curious eyesore. Here on 5th Street near the new Bloomingdales a homeless woman used a large concrete planter for a bed.
San Francisco spends millions of dollars each year on homeless services, but many of the programs are unaccountable. The lack of a main computer system keeps many programs from talking to each other and tracking the progress of their homeless clients.
{Brant Ward/The Chronicle} 4/27/06 less

unaccountable037.jpg
Despite the claims of thousands of homeless being taken off the streets, they still remain a curious eyesore. Here on 5th Street near the new Bloomingdales a homeless woman used a large ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Photo: Brant Ward

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unaccountable037.jpg
Despite the claims of thousands of homeless being taken off the streets, they still remain a curious eyesore. Here on 5th Street near the new Bloomingdales a homeless woman used a large concrete planter for a bed.
San Francisco spends millions of dollars each year on homeless services, but many of the programs are unaccountable. The lack of a main computer system keeps many programs from talking to each other and tracking the progress of their homeless clients.
{Brant Ward/The Chronicle} 4/27/06 less

unaccountable037.jpg
Despite the claims of thousands of homeless being taken off the streets, they still remain a curious eyesore. Here on 5th Street near the new Bloomingdales a homeless woman used a large ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Money well spent? The city can't tell

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Nearly three years after the election of a mayor who promised to change how San Francisco deals with homelessness, the number of people living on the street is down but the city is still unable to track in a meaningful way the performance of nonprofit groups it pays tens of millions of dollars a year to provide services.

Since taking office in January 2004, Mayor Gavin Newsom has put an end to welfare practices widely viewed as enabling chronic homelessness. He also started initiatives to reach out to and provide a way off the street for hundreds of homeless people.

But a key management tool -- a computer system that links the dozens of homeless-aid groups receiving city money so officials can see who is being served, and how efficiently and effectively -- is still years away, the Newsom administration concedes.

Eight city departments spend at least $108 million annually on direct services to the homeless or to people who are recently or in danger of becoming homeless. At least $89 million of that goes to about 76 private, mostly nonprofit organizations under some 400 separate contracts, The Chronicle found.

As the number of contractors grew over the past two decades along with the homeless population -- a phenomenon repeated in other cities -- they formed a social-service network that analysts say demands modern management tools to guard against waste and to give policymakers the ability to make informed funding decisions.

Continued from Page 1: "Being able to track what services are being used by which people is an absolutely necessary tool for ending homelessness in this country, and we've got quite a way to go before we're able to do that the way we should," Dennis Culhane, a Philadelphia-based researcher who is the nation's leading expert on homeless aid data systems, said at a national conference in the spring.

"Until we get these systems in place, we will be wasting money," he said.

In San Francisco, about 6,200 people are homeless on any given night, according to the most recent one-night street count, compared with more than 8,600 in a 2002 count. Research by HomeBase, a national policy and advocacy group, shows that 17,000 people in the city are homeless at least once during the year.

A Chronicle analysis of city outlays to private contractors found they totaled $65 million in fiscal 2003, $76 million in fiscal 2004 and $89 million in fiscal 2005, the last period for which complete figures are available.

Under Newsom, a greater share of that funding is going to permanent housing linked to rehabilitation services, often provided under the same roof.

That increase for supportive housing programs reflects the city's adoption of Newsom's signature homeless welfare reform, Care Not Cash. Approved by voters in 2002, it cut cash aid under the general assistance program and directed the saved welfare money to shelter and housing assistance.

Implicit in the arrangement is the idea that money for the homeless can be put to better use by the city, rather than by handing out cash payments to people who frequently have alcohol or drug abuse problems or mental illnesses.

Closely tracking the money, however, is crucial to maximizing its efficiency, and that's where San Francisco, like every other city, needs work. A computerized tracking system was first proposed by the city controller in 2002, when Newsom was still on the Board of Supervisors.

More than four years later, San Francisco still doesn't have the tools to assess how dollars can best be spent when it comes to the tens of millions going to the city's network of homeless aid and prevention services.

"The city has not been able to ensure that this money has gone where it is most needed," City Controller Ed Harrington wrote in May 2002 after his office's management audit of the homeless aid delivery system.

Harrington recommended that San Francisco install a computer system to tie together local homeless service networks to allow the collection of "information about homeless clients over time," streamlining of services, and improved coordination and policy decisions.

In the absence of such a system or some alternative, the city has been without the necessary information to determine which contractors are producing results and which aren't, which are part of the solution and which might be perpetuating the status quo of chronic homelessness.

San Francisco needs "data that describes the clients who use particular services, the resources used to provide those services, how well the services work, and the needs that remain unmet," Harrington wrote.

At the time, federal officials with control over the funding of homeless services programs through the Department of Housing and Urban Development were moving to require computerized Homeless Management Information Systems at the local level.

They commissioned a study that said a system for a large community like San Francisco, linking 200 sites, 110 users and 400 personal computers over two years, might cost $340,000 to install.

However, in the face of higher costs and political resistance, cities took half-measures and federal officials relaxed their mandate.

In San Francisco, officials created a computerized intake system that links the city's emergency homeless shelters and allows them to compile data on who is coming and going from the shelters and when; it has cost $2.1 million to install and operate, city officials said.

In the meantime, Project Homeless Connect, the Newsom administration's bimonthly gathering of volunteers and social workers teaming up to help the homeless, is building a database of the names and histories of people who walk in the door seeking assistance.

But, for the most part, private groups under contract to serve the homeless aren't tied together in any meaningful way. They still file periodic reports on paper to one of eight city departments, using varying formats and performance measures -- and frequently without specifying whom they have helped and to what end.

"We still don't have it down," Newsom acknowledged in an interview. "It's critical for reforms. If you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go. In this coming year, I am making it one of my highest priorities."

In the fiscal year that started July 1, the administration intends to hire an information services coordinator and a technician to start linking databases being built at city shelters, Project Homeless Connect and data generated in other parts of the system.

Ultimately, the goal is to tie in every agency helping the homeless -- creating, segment by segment, what the controller called for four years ago.

The $200,000 that the administration budgeted to pay for the two new technology posts this fiscal year is to be sliced in equal pieces from every city homeless services contractor receiving funding under the federal McKinney Act.

An additional $400,000 to pay for consulting and equipment is expected in January, under a bill written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and passed in August by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Such moves historically have not been universally popular among advocates for the homeless.

"Why in the world do we need all this exotic technology?" asked Chance Martin, who, as editor of the Street Sheet homeless newspaper, long fought such spending. "They're always trying to find new ways to spend homeless money that don't give services to homeless people."

But even Martin said that if such a system were to free up energy spent now on filing paper reports, and if it helped social workers target efforts toward people who most need the assistance, he could support it.

More and more people seem to feel that way.

The administration's plan to tap McKinney funds for the two new information-management jobs got past a longtime stumbling block this year when it won approval of the city's Local Homeless Coordinating Board. The board, dominated by nonprofit services providers, turned away similar plans in each of the previous two years.

"In the end, it's not how much you spend that really counts, it's how effective that money is," said one former opponent, Jeff Kositsky, head of Community Housing Partnership, one of the biggest suppliers of supportive housing and job training for homeless people.

"To assess that, you need uniform standards for all the services, and comparisons. But nobody has that.

"It can't happen soon enough."

San Francisco's spending on the homeless
One significant
challenge for the city is establishing a computerized system to track how
efficiently its money is spent.
Estimated city funding of direct services to homeless by year:
Total City-run programs
2002-03 $88 million $23 million
2003-04 $99 million $23 million
2004-05 $108 million $19 million
The bulk goes to 76 contractors, including more than 70 nonprofts. Top 10
recipients of city money for homeless funding in 2004-05, according to city
records:
In millions
Episcopal Community Services $9.4
Tenderloin Housing Clinic 8.4
Baker Places 6.2
Catholic Charities 5.7
Mercy Housing California 4.7
St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco 4.1
Conard House Inc. 4.0
Community Awareness Treatment Services (CATS) 3.5
Hamilton Family Center 3.4
Larkin Street Youth Services 3.3
The organizations that say they spent the most (in the latest year
available) on homeless programs:
In millions
St. Anthony Foundation $14.4
Tenderloin Housing Clinic 14.0
Salvation Army 12.9
Catholic Charities 12.1
Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco 10.6
Larkin Street Youth Services 7.5
Glide Foundation/Glide Memorial Church 6.1
St. Vincent de Paul Society 6.0
Walden House 6.0
Community Awareness Treatment Services 5.2
Source: San Francisco departments